Baidu surges on reported AI chatbot project announcement
Shares of Baidu jumped greater than 13% in Hong Kong’s trading session as the corporate announced that its artificial intelligence chatbot was almost ready for public launch.
The confirmation of prior reports comes as Microsoft-backed ChatGPT has surged in popularity and Google has rushed to develop its own.
It’s unclear how Baidu’s chatbot capabilities will compare with ChatGPT’s.
Baidu said its AI chatbot project will likely complete internal testing in March before being made public.
The chatbot is known as “ERNIE bot” in English or “Wenxin Yiyan” in Chinese, Baidu said.
In a recent presentation earlier this yr, Chief Technology Officer Haifeng Wang had emphasized the importance of deep learning because the core of Artificial Intelligence and that it’s showing “increasingly strong potential.”
– Evelyn Cheng, Jihye Lee
Real wages in Japan rise for the primary time in 9 months, but household spending falls
Real wages in Japan rose for the primary time in nine months, inching up 0.1% in the ultimate month of 2022 on an annualized basis, statistics from Japan’s labor ministry showed.
Money earnings also climbed 4.8% in December.
The rise was led by bonuses, which rose 7.8% in comparison with the identical period a yr ago.
Meanwhile, household spending in Japan fell 2.1% in December, higher than expectations of a 0.3% growth from economists polled by Reuters.
This comes as Japan faces its highest rate of inflation since December 1981, with core consumer prices rising 3.7% in November on an annualized basis.
– Lim Hui Jie
Australia’s goods and services exports fell in December, while imports rose
Australia’s exports for goods and services fell 1% in December, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics, led by other mineral fuels.
Meanwhile imports rose by 1% driven by travel services.
This resulted in a seasonally adjusted balance on goods and services dropping $1.23 billion Australian dollars ($849 million).
The Australian dollar strengthened roughly 0.3% to 0.6901 against the U.S. dollar.
CNBC Pro: These ETFs and mutual funds face thousands and thousands in losses amid the Adani crisis
Retail investors and pension funds are facing thousands and thousands of dollars in losses on investments in Adani Group corporations, CNBC Pro can reveal.
Latest evaluation shows that 951 mutual funds and ETFs worldwide have cumulatively lost greater than $4.2 billion in the worth of their Adani shares this yr.
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— Ganesh Rao
CNBC Pro: Need to play the ChatGPT buzz? Analysts love these A.I. stocks — giving one upside of 150%
Much buzz has been generated around ChatGPT, a man-made intelligence chatbot that is gone viral and reportedly reached 100 million monthly energetic users in January.
Its popularity has sparked much interest in artificial intelligence tech.
“You actually have to contemplate the role that artificial intelligence goes to play … it’s made this quantum leap almost, , overnight. And so I believe that puts it right smack within the front and center of individuals’s portfolios,” Kenny Polcari, chief market strategist at SlateStone Wealth, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Monday.
For investors considering investing in AI, CNBC Pro screens for related stocks that analysts love, with big potential upside.
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— Weizhen Tan
Stocks close down Monday
Stocks ended Monday within the red as concerns over high bond yields weighed on investors.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite led the three major indexes down, losing 1% within the session. The S&P 500 ended down 0.6%, while the Dow shed 0.1%.
Three major indexes
Goldman cuts recession probability to 25%
Goldman Sachs, which already was doubtful of Wall Street’s recession expectations, thinks there’s even less of a likelihood now.
The firm cut its recession probability for the following 12 months to 25%, down from 35% previously. That is well below the 65% expectation from essentially the most recent Wall Street Journal survey.
“Continued strength within the labor market and early signs of improvement within the business surveys suggest that the chance of a near-term slump has diminished notably,” the firm said in a client note Monday.
GDP is more likely to grow just 0.4% in the primary quarter but then speed up through the yr, Goldman added.
—Jeff Cox
Bond yields are popping higher. That is how investors can play them
Treasury yields jumped on Monday as investors awaited clues from Federal Reserve speakers on the following steps for monetary policy.
The yield on the 1-year T-bill leapt as high as 4.841% Monday morning, and the speed on the 2-year note jumped to 4.412%. These are the best levels since Jan. 6. Yields on longer-dated Treasurys ticked higher, too, with the speed on the 10-year note climbing as high as 3.619%, the best level since Jan. 10. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
Yields have been trending higher for the reason that Fed launched into its rate-hiking campaign last yr, and bond prices tumbled. Nevertheless, a chance has since opened for investors hoping to snap up these fixed-income instruments on the low-cost and collect a gorgeous yield.
Read more on where advisors want to play the rising rate environment here.
-Darla Mercado, Gina Francolla
